by Eva Chase
I was the only person Jude had dared to tell. Not even the other scions knew. Being with me wasn’t just about having a good time for him, despite the carefree airs he feigned so well. I might be the only fearmancer he knew who wouldn’t shun him when they found out the truth of his parentage.
Maybe Jude had guessed the direction my thoughts had wandered in. He rested his free hand lightly on the keys and played a few soft notes. “If I’ve got any natural talent, it came from my real father,” he said, looking at the piano rather than me. His floppy dark copper hair fell forward to shadow his eyes. “That’s actually why I started teaching myself in the first place. I figured out who he was not that long before I started here, looked him up, and found out everything I could about him.”
I scooted closer and tipped my head to Jude’s shoulder. “Do you think you could ever tell him what happened—who you are?”
He shook his head. “It’d just make a bigger mess. And I don’t think he’d want to know. He was married when it happened—he’s got his own kids. I don’t want to ruin his life, for what? He’d probably hate me because of what my parents did to him to make it happen.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“No, but it’s the only reason I’m here.” He reached and shut the keyboard cover before turning to me. “Let’s not dwell on that, though. I had much more enjoyable reasons for asking you to meet me here.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Did you?”
He smiled slyly and touched his nose to mine as his breath warmed my lips. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” His fingers teased into my hair and traced over my scalp, sending a giddy shiver through me. “You’ve had to spend your summer break worrying about all kinds of crap. I think you deserve a chance to leave all that behind.” He brushed a kiss to my cheek, then my jaw, then the corner of my mouth, until my lips ached for contact. His voice dropped to a murmur. “I’ve never been with a girl up here before.”
“No?” I said, just barely holding back a gasp when he nipped the crook of my neck.
“You’re the only one who’s ever gotten to see my musical side.” He paused and looked me straight in the eyes. “The only one I would have wanted to share that side of me with.”
The emotion in those words made my pulse skip a beat. Before I could answer, he was kissing me the way I’d wanted, his mouth capturing mine, his hands in my hair and on my waist pulling me even closer to him.
Jude had bragged to me once about his extensive experience in this area, and while I couldn’t say I enjoyed thinking about the many other girls he might have gotten hot and heavy with, I had no complaints about benefiting from all that practice. With each kiss, my lips tingled hotter. They parted, and his tongue slipped past them to duel with mine. An eager flush was already spreading through my entire body.
Maybe this was only a temporary escape from the problems looming over me, but damn, it was a thrilling one.
Jude turned his attentions to my neck, making each inch of my skin light up with pleasure. His fingers danced up my side as if playing a melody on my ribs and stroked my breast through my silk blouse. A whimper worked from my throat at the rush of sensation.
I slid my hands up under his shirt, ignoring the wobble of the thin silver cuffs at my wrists, wanting to feel as much of him as I could. His lean muscles shifted at my touch. I swept my palms over his nipples, and he groaned with a sear of breath against my neck.
“I never knew it was possible to want someone this much until I met you,” he said in a rasp.
My agreement came out as a shaky chuckle lost in the crash of his mouth against mine. As we kissed even more hungrily, his hand eased my skirt up my thigh, his fingers tracing patterns on the sensitive skin as they climbed. A throbbing heat built where my legs met.
An urgent sound escaped me that was almost a growl, and Jude grinned against my lips. He cupped my sex, somehow relieving the ache of need and sharpening it at the same time.
With each swivel of his fingers, bliss pulsed up from my core. My breath trembled between kisses. Jude rose off the bench, tipping me over so I lay on my back and tugging my panties off at the same time. He bent over me to claim my mouth once more, but before I could do more than run my hands down his chest, he was pulling back.
“I haven’t gotten to taste you yet,” he said with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. Tugging at my hips, he slid me to the far end of the bench. My knees bent to keep my feet on the wooden surface for balance—and splayed around his head as he knelt between my thighs.
“Fuck,” I muttered as he pressed his lips to a tender spot just inches from my sex. Jude hummed with satisfaction and charted a scorching path the rest of the way to my core. His mouth closed over my clit with a skillful flick of his tongue, and I couldn’t hold back a moan.
My hips rocked with the movements of his mouth. Every thought fled my mind except the awareness of the waves of pleasure rushing through me. He sucked hard on my clit and then grazed it with the tips of his teeth, and I outright bucked with a cry of longing. My head tipped back against the bench.
Jude devoured me with renewed intensity, his tongue slicking right inside me, and I came apart with a shudder of limbs and breath. The ecstasy rolled through me all the way up to my head and down to my toes.
It wasn’t enough. When he raised his head, I tangled my fingers in his hair and urged him back up over me. “I want everything,” I said.
“Who am I to deny you?” he said with a rough laugh. He snapped his belt open and made short work of his pants, leaning over me. As he kissed me again, my taste tart on his lips, his hand slid under my ass to pull me even closer to the edge, raising my hips at the same time. My ankles crossed behind his waist instinctively. He dipped his head just long enough to speak the quick protective casting, and then he plunged into me so hard and fast I moaned again.
I was so ready, and the angle he held me at sent his cock through me with the perfect sear of pleasure. He kissed my mouth, my shoulder, my breasts through my blouse, his free hand branding me everywhere as the other held my hips in place. I caressed his lean body everywhere I could reach, but it was hard to focus on anything except the peak I was hurtling toward with each thrust.
I arched into him, he adjusted my hips against him just slightly, and his cock hit a spot inside me that set off an even more electric burst of pleasure. “Faster,” I pleaded. He complied with a groan. He filled me again and again, pressing that blissful spot over and over, and I lost myself completely.
My back bowed, my legs quivered, and pleasure crashed over me so forcefully that sparks went off behind my eyes. “Oh,” I mumbled, with another quake as Jude came shuddering with me.
He rocked to a stop, still holding me to him, bent over me where I lay on the bench. Pleasure had hazed his eyes and softened the sharp angles of his face. I touched his cheek with a rush of affection. He gazed down at me with a smile I couldn’t have called anything but joyful.
In an impressive show of physical maneuvering, he managed to collect me against him so he could sit down on the bench with me straddling him, barely breaking the contact between our bodies. He leaned back against the closed piano and wrapped his arms around me. I nestled my head against his shoulder with a contented sigh. His arms tightened.
“I know we talked about it before,” he said quietly, “but I want to say it again, just to be clear. I don’t care about being part of the barony. I just want you in my life, any way I can have you. If some secret Bloodstone sibling appeared tomorrow and proved themselves the real scion, that wouldn’t change a thing. If you ever have any doubts—if you need to look inside my head—”
The earnestness of his tone made my heart skip a beat. I lifted my head to meet his eyes. “I believe you. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
A look came over his face that was hopeful and hesitant all at once. “That’s why— Everyone and everything here is bullshit. I’ve been bullshit my whole life. But now, being with you… I feel like I’m f
iguring out how to be someone real.” A tiny bit of fear shivered from him into me. His voice came out even lower than before, “I love you, Rory.”
An ache spread through my chest at the nervousness he’d felt admitting those three words. My emotions were too cluttered for me to say them back with the certainty he’d have deserved, but I answered him the best way I could, with a kiss so tender it took my own breath away.
Jude kissed me back, holding me close, not seeming to need more than that. As he adjusted me against him, my sex brushed against an unexpected hardness in his lap. I kissed him once more and eased back with an amused smile. “Ready to go again already?”
Jude beamed at me, any anxiety he’d been feeling before gone. He shifted his hips so his erection slid against me again. “I do bring a few talents to the table, if not a title.”
A giggle tickled up my throat. I leaned close, slipping my arms around his shoulders, and murmured in his ear, “Then make love to me.”
He laughed a little breathlessly. “I’ve never wanted to do anything more.” And as he slid inside me, I couldn’t let myself believe that I’d ever have to give this up.
Chapter Nine
Rory
Being back in class should have made my life feel more normal, but reminders of how much had changed in the past week surrounded me. Except for Connar, the students in my current Persuasion seminar reacted with varying tremors of fear when I walked into the room. The girl at the desk next to the one I took scooted farther away on her seat. I heard someone behind me murmuring to a friend that they didn’t need to worry because of the blacksuit “bracelets” I had on.
And then there was our teacher. Professor Crowford strode in looking like his usual aging ladies’-man self, his mostly silver hair falling artfully on either side of his heavy-lidded eyes. In his particular case, the problem wasn’t that anything about him had changed. I simply knew more about him than I had before. Like that he’d thought it was a great idea to encourage all the fearmancer students here for summer term to manipulate the Nary students as far as they could.
Like the fact that Professor Banefield had included him on a list of people involved with my biggest enemies, the barons.
Crowford didn’t appear to pay any special attention to me when he came to a stop in front of his desk. He leaned against it and rubbed his hands together with a smile of anticipation.
“Good to see you all back. I hope you enjoyed your break—longer for some of you than others—and that you’re ready to dive back into your learning.”
Heads nodded along the rows of desks. Crowford pushed off the desk again and started to pace at the front of the room. I let my gaze follow him, which was totally normal for a student. What I’d really like to learn today was not his lesson but what was going on inside his head. But a man adept in Persuasion must have also built up some pretty solid mental walls.
“I thought we’d try something a little different today,” he said. “All of you are more than familiar with the most common use of persuasion spells, which is to influence another person’s mind. But for those of you who aren’t particularly strong in some other domains, you may be interested to hear that a talent in persuasion can be adapted to compensate for certain other skills. For example, you may not be able to conjure an object out of thin air, but with enough practice you can ‘persuade’ something already there to move or alter its shape in basic ways.”
To supplement a person’s abilities in Physicality. I had to admit that was kind of interesting, even though I already enjoyed working in the Physicality domain more than Persuasion. That kind of flexibility must apply to other skills as well. Jude had told me he was only actually strong in two areas, not three, but he’d managed to convince the professors that he had the same three strengths as the other scions all this time.
As Crowford drew in a breath, I said my insight casting word under my breath with just the slightest nudge of power. I wasn’t launching an assault yet, just testing the terrain.
My awareness tapped against a barrier around the professor’s mind. To my careful prodding, it felt firmer than any I’d encountered before.
I drew my focus back. Getting in there, especially getting in unnoticed, would take a lot of work. Maybe not something I could risk while the blacksuits’ cuffs were recording every spell I cast.
Crowford motioned to us. “Let’s start with a small test you can all participate in. Take out some small object you have on you—a pen, a coin, a keycard—and set it on your desk. See if you can persuade it to move from one side of the desk to the other, using only your persuasive abilities. No physicality spells allowed.”
The first thing in my purse that my fingers closed around was a pack of gum. That seemed small enough. I set it at the left side of my desk and considered my approach.
A pack of gum didn’t have a mind to cast on. How was I supposed to direct my spell?
Professor Crowford chuckled. “I see many of you looking puzzled. As an additional tip, let me remind you that all magic is about the transfer of energy. When you persuade someone’s mental state, your magic is acting on the energy in their brain. Every object contains a certain amount of energy down to its atoms. Convince that energy to act.”
Right. I frowned at the pack of gum and drew some of my magic into the back of my throat. When I concentrated, I could sense a faint hum of… not awareness, but presence from the little cardboard case.
“Slide,” I ordered it in my best persuasive tone, willing the energy be inclined to shift sideways. The box twitched and traveled half an inch to the right. A smile crossed my lips. Not bad for a start.
It took ten minutes or so, but I managed to compel the gum all the way across my desk. From the whispered voices around me, everyone else was intent on the assignment as well. Professor Crowford strolled between the desks, offering words of encouragement and assistance as needed. When he reached me, he watched for a few seconds and then said only, “Nicely done.”
As the rest of the class finished with their attempts, he took his position at his desk again. “Let’s try something a little more substantial. Miss Scarlow, you’ve worked from this angle before, clearly. Would you like to show the class just how large an effect you can pull off. Say…” He glanced around and pointed to the wooden cabinet in the corner. “Lift and rotate the cabinet.”
“I think I can do that, sir,” the girl said, her cheeks flushing eagerly at having been singled out as a worthy example.
I guessed she’d have to persuade the air around the piece of furniture that it was meant to push upward and then around? Using that type of magic to move something that big and heavy seemed absurd to me, but presumably showing the limitations of this kind of spell was the point of this lesson.
It was possible to move that large an object, in any case. The girl said her casting under her breath, and then added a few more words, and the cabinet wobbled a few inches into the air. It edged up inch by inch until it hovered a foot off the ground.
Triumph lit her face as she spoke again with more casting words that meant nothing to me. The cabinet swayed and began to turn in a slow but steady circle. Someone behind me drew in a breath in awe.
Then the classroom door opened with a squeak of the hinges and voices in mid-conversation.
Everyone startled and looked over. Professor Crowford made a cutting gesture with his hand, and the girl who’d been casting blanched. The cabinet thudded to the floor as she released the spell. We all stared at the four figures in the doorway who were now staring back at us.
They were Naries. I recognized a couple of the guys from my summer project activities, and there was Shelby just behind them with another girl. All Naries… and they’d almost walked in on us in the middle of a magical demonstration. My heart started to thud almost as loud as the cabinet’s fall. Weren’t there supposed to be protections against that kind of intrusion?
“I believe you’ve come to the wrong room,” Crowford said in a cold tone.
&nb
sp; “I—the schedule said—” the boy at the front of the group stuttered. He looked down at the paper in his hand and winced. “Crap. I could swear I re-checked this three times because we don’t usually go to this room. I’m really sorry about the interruption.”
They retreated together, Shelby shooting me a quick smile when she spotted me just before the boy yanked the door shut again.
“That could have been disastrous,” the professor muttered, which didn’t do anything to settle my nerves. Or those of my classmates, from the look of the faces around me. “They’re getting awfully bold.”
I didn’t see what boldness had to do with it when it’d been a mistaken reading of a schedule. But a shadow flickered across most of the other mages’ faces at those words. “Should we do anything?” one of the guys asked.
Crowford cocked his head. “Perhaps it would be good to leave them with a negative impression of this intrusion, if anyone has an appropriate idea?”
“I’ll knock one down the stairs,” another guy volunteered, sounding way too eager, and leapt right into his casting. My pulse hiccupped for a totally different reason. Any of the Naries could get really hurt if he pulled that off.
There wasn’t time to protest. As soon as he used his magic to sense their position, he’d attack. I swiped my hand across my mouth to hide the word I spat out in a whisper with a sharp breath. “Shield.”
With every ounce of my concentration, I flung my protective spell through the door, willing it to fill the entire stairwell. It snapped into place an instant before the guy’s casting hurtled into it. A jolt ran over my skin as the contrasting magic dissipated against each other.
The guy sat back in his seat with a smirk. Clearly he hadn’t been able to tell that his spell had been blocked before it’d reached its target. Better for me.